Senate will investigate "Iraq Evidence"

Senate will probe White House claims on Iraqi weapons

Capitol Hill Blue

Jun 2, 2003, 00:26

The credibility of Bush administration "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is under review in the Senate, where even Republicans worry the White House may have fabricated intelligence reports to justify war.

So at least two Senate committees plan to investigate whether U.S. intelligence accurately pointed to banned weapons in Iraq.

One of those Senators is Republican John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy and chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

"More than 11 weeks have passed without conclusive evidence of an Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction and it's time to investigate whether intelligence reports saying so were correct,Warner said Sunday.

"But the fact that we're just investigating it, should not in any way indicate that we're putting any credibility doubt against the CIA or the Bush administration," Warner said on CNN's late Edition.

But an Armed Services Committee staff member said Sunday night that the Senator is privately worried that the administration may have "expanded on the truth" to justify invading Iraq.

"The White House was so smug and sure that the weapons would be there that they may have embellished the truth with the certainty that the weapons would be found," the staff member told Capitol Hill Blue. "The fact that they have not been found raises serious questions."

Warner said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee might look jointly into the situation.

One member of the Intelligence panel, Sen. Bob Graham, running for the Democratic presidential nomination from Florida, went further than other senators in declaring on CNN that the government might have willfully distributed erroneous information on Iraq's arsenal.

"If we don't find these weapons of mass destruction, it will represent a serious intelligence failure or the manipulation of that intelligence to keep the American people in the dark," Graham said.

Powell's doubts over CIA intelligence on Iraq prompted him to set up secret review

"...Fresh evidence emerged last night that Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was so disturbed about questionable American intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he assembled a secret team to review the information he was given before he made a crucial speech to the UN security council on February 5.

Mr Powell conducted a full-dress rehearsal of the speech on the eve of the session at his suite in the Waldorf Astoria, his New York base when he is on UN business, according to the authoritative US News and World Report.

Much of the initial information for Mr Powell's speech to the UN was provided by the Pentagon, where Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, set up a special unit, the Office of Special Plans, to counter the uncertainty of the CIA's intelligence on Iraq.

Mr Powell's team removed dozens of pages of alleged evidence about Iraq's banned weapons and ties to terrorists from a draft of his speech, US News and World Report says today. At one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to intelligence claims that he declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit," according to the magazine..."

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printed from Senate will investigate "Iraq Evidence" on 2004-05-06 09:14:41